I’ve begun to watch the latest season of Trigun (Trigun Stargaze, to be precise) and while there’s still more to watch before I share my thoughts on it, it did kind of jiggle something loose when I started watching it last weekend. You see, I first watched Trigun about fifteen years ago and it quickly became my favorite anime. A cheerful, happy protagonist (Vash the Stampede) who endured endless suffering but still managed to get out there every day and crow about love and peace? That was what I aspired to be for quite a while. It was easy to admire his dedication to not killing anyone, his ability to endure in the face of unspeakable pain, and his willingness to sacrifice himself in order to save others. After all, that aligned him with the vision of myself I’d been raised to hold and it fed into the still-unhealthy parts of said vision that I carried forward into my adulthood. It was easy to take his side as he preached against killing, as he tried to redeem his ally (Nicholos D. Wolfwood) who would kill as he thought he must, and just as easy to mourn but celebrate Wolfwood’s death at the end of the first anime (the one from the late 90s) because Wolfwood ultimately chose the path of nonviolence and self-sacrifice. These days, it is much less easy. These days, after decades of self-sacrifice and burning myself up (and out) to keep others warm, I find my perspective has shifted. I still appreciate Vash and his optimision, I still appreciate his commitment to protection, but I can’t really align myself with it any more. I like what he does, I like the way that he is perhaps the least gun-using gunslinger in this western-adjacent anime of the last few years. But I find myself on Wolfwood’s side more and more now. Sometimes, no matter what you want, no matter how much you sacrifice, no matter how strongly you will it, some one needs to be stopped and you won’t be able to redeem them.